


A Breath of Fresh Air

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-19 13:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John, a mechanic for the army, finds Karkat, an injured troll, outside of his apartment, and decides to bring him home for "repairs". Karkat leaves, but shows up again soon enough, with another injured friend. What does John do when this gray secret becomes deeper and deeper, and easier and easier to unravel?</p><p>Shitty summary is shitty, I hope the story is better!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

You know you should run. You know you should turn away and not look back. You know the General could quite possibly murder you for doing this. You know you shouldn't be torn like this. 

But you also knew that this is alive. This is a living, breathing(though perhaps not for long), thing that needs your help.

It's not that you don't see his yellow claws, his razor sharp teeth behind parted lips, his gray skin, his horns. Everything about him screams, "Predator!"

But his body was so small, his horns so hotdog, and his blood was so, so red.


	2. Chapter 1: A Stupid Decision

This is potentially a terrible idea. Scratch that. This is going to be a huge mistake no matter how you play it from here on out. So why are you doing this? Oh, Gog, no clue. It’s not even some sappy bullshins about how it would eat you alive had you left him, or you felt some deep emotionally connection with your morals as a human at the moment in which you found the small troll, each breath a battle, each second closer to death. 

It was more like, you were intrigued. You’d never seen a living troll before. And, as barely as possible, this one was. You’d always thought that the war between humans and trolls was stupid and pointless, that the humans were just selfish, and trolls were misunderstood. It wasn’t their fault they were different looking. It wasn’t their fault they had gray skin and horns and claws and fangs, and yellow predator’s eyes. It wasn’t their fault the planet they’d been born on had been a ticking time bomb for millions of years, having been slowly but steadily pulled in by the force of their sun’s gravity.

A slow, rasping breath tears you from your reverie. If you don’t do something, your troll will be dead. And it’ll be your fault, at least partially.

So you stare at him, panicked, and decide you’re going to give him a piggy back ride to your apartment. Which is going to be difficult considering how much blood he’s lost. I mean, how much blood can he possibly have left? 

You’re going to be carrying him into the small town of Prospit. This is not a god idea. He is obviously a troll. Really obviously. Way too obviously. But this is an emergency. 

You yank off your hoodie and wrap it around him as best as you can, hoping the blood will stop. Naive.

“M’kay, c’mere.” You grunt, probably failing to gently heave the troll onto your back as you take off running towards home.

You go slowly. It’s not like the troll on your back is heavy, actually quite the opposite. He’s frighteningly light, as if he’s been missing way too many meals for way too long. Or its just the blood loss, which is almost a scarier thought than the previous. You can feel shallow breaths on your neck, and try not to jostle the wounded troll to the best of your ability. You take long strides through the thick trees, and after each swift step you set your foot down softly, heel to toe, cushioning the fluid leaps.

But even with your soft steps, a shiver ripples down your spine as you feel warm, sticky wetness against the back of your shirt. How could he have bled through the sweatshirt already? Oh Gog. Oh Gog. What if he doesn’t make it?

But he will. He has to. There’s just no way you’re letting him die. 

Climbing the stairs was a chore. You can now feel the blood completely soaking the back of your shirt, making you feel awful and dirty. 

You lay him carefully on the couch, not caring about the bloodstains, and carefully peel his shirt off. It makes a wet “shlick” type sound that makes your stomach twist painfully. But when you see the wound, it knots in a way that would make any self-respecting contortionist jealous.

Where you’d expected bullet holes, there was a wide open gash, perhaps three-quarters of an inch thick, still sluggishly oozing blood. It’s on the left side, just a bit higher than the belly button. Not that he has one, it’s more of a shallow-but-noticeable dent. You immediately realize that no amount of bandages is going to fix this. 

So stitches. You’ve fixed buttons and cat-shredded curtains, maybe the occasional sock, but you’ve never dreamed of sewing a person. You swallow the bile that rises in your throat. How different can they possibly be?

As you learn, pretty different. You aren’t sure whether to sew only the skin or the entire thing. But you are wholly grateful that his lungs seem to be intact, and that the only thing that seems to have been injured is stomach fat and muscle. No vital organs.

Staring at the thing isn’t going to make you any more prepared. You can feel the troll’s breathing getting shallower and shallower by each second you hesitate. You glare at your shaking hands, and slap yourself. Hard. Ow. You shake your head to clear it, and snatch the threaded needle again. And begin, stitching tight, neat, small stitches, and before you know it, the wound isn’t a wound, just a thick line of thread. Not nearly so scary. 

And then you notice he’s not breathing. 

Shit. 

Shit!

His heat is still beating, faintly. So you cup his chin, hold his nose, and blow into his mouth. His chest heaves upward, but flops back onto the couch. He’s still not breathing. And his heart stopped. Oh, SHIT! In a flash you’re on him, doing compressions, pausing only to inhale hugely and puff into his mouth, and then you’re right back to pumping his chest up and down, your blue eyes are wild, frantic, and after maybe 30 seconds of steady going you’re completely lightheaded. You pause, ready to faint from over-intake of breath, and complete exhaustion at having your evening run interrupted by a heavily bleeding troll. 

But before you do, you note with some amount of satisfaction that he is breathing. Deeply, evenly, healthily. That’s relieving.

Before you collapse, you stumble into your bathroom, snatch a roll of bandages, and cart yourself back towards the unconscious troll. You do you best to prop him up with your foot as you roll the bandages around his middle, until the entire cut has been covered, and the bandages have been comfortably-yet-securely fastened. 

Then you slide down to the floor with full intent of keeping watch over him, but with your back resting on the couch bottom, and the troll out of immediate danger, you have time to send a ‘thank you’ to Gog for your EMT training before you pass out.

-~-

A hoarse yell pries your eyes open from a nightmare filled with trolls and blood and death. You immediately whip your head around to face the troll on your couch, but frown when he’s still sleeping peacefully. It’s then that you realize that the scream came from you.

Oh. 

Your stomach rumbles loudly, and you flush red. On your way to the kitchen, though, you look back at the troll, and wonder what time it is. You went running at about 8:30 last night. Darkness is more fun to run in than light anyway. The microwave has the time on it. Three o’clock, and by the orange autumn light streaming through the windows, its the afternoon. You just slept for like, eighteen hours. 

Who can blame you? Yesterday was something of an ordeal.

Oh, where’s your phone? 

General’s going kill you. You’re not a soldier or anything even close, just a mechanic. A fixer. But there was this Beechjet 400...General said that if you finished it fast enough, you’d be allowed to take it for a spin. Oh, that would have been great. Oh, man. You wanted that ride. You aren’t often given the privilege of playing with the toy- ahem, machines that you help. Fix.

Oh, there it is! You scoop your phone into your hands, and grimace at the phone call from the General. There’s only one, but that alone sends a shiver down your spine. You press the call button, and cringe in apprehension.

The phone rings. Once. Then it has that open wind noise that says that he picked up, but you stay quiet. Sickness is the only option. You cough feebly.

“Well?” The icy-cold-quiet-calm frightens you even more. You cough again, hoping it doesn’t sound as fake as it, well, is.

“Hi.” You put way to much effort into saying it, and close your voice so that is sounds like you lost your voice. 

Another awkward silence. “Why aren’t you here?”

“I’m sick, sir.” You’re sort of proud. You sound honest to god hoarsely sick.

“Are you at a hospital?”

“Uh, no. No sir.”

“What seems to be the affliction?”

“I have strep throat, General.” Damn straight. After you’re done playing sick, your voice is going to be seriously trashed.

“Tell me, do you fix things with your voice?” Static cruelty ripples down the line.

“Uh, no, sir.”

“Then why, pray tell, did you take leave from work today?”

“I, uh, thought it unwise to get everyone else sick, sir.” 

“Do the other mechanics in your division fix things with their voices?”

“Well, no, sir, but-”

“Then you should have come to work!” Oh jesus. He’s mad. He’s really, really mad.

“You’re right, sir, I should have-”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“The other people in my division, sir. They might not appreciate getting strep throat from me.” 

“I don’t give a damn. The trolls are sending in another raid, and they’ll get here by the end of the week.”

“Chill, it’s only Tuesday.” You hear a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. Oh shit. “Uh. sir. I apologize for my disrespect sir.” Your voice cracks on the word apologize. Perfect.

“Are you planning to come in at all today, Egbert?” The icy-cold-quiet-calm is back.

“I-I wasn’t, sir.”

“Am I going to have to assign that Beechjet to someone else?”

“No!” You shout in a strangled voice. Then you flush red, embarrassed at showing such deference to your superior. “Ahem, uh, no, sir.” Your vocal facade is still in place.

“Then you’re going to come in and fix it tomorrow.” 

“Yes sir, I will, sir.” You babble in relief, and now that you’ve tired your voice out with the fake sick it comes out raw, and painful. But at least now you needn’t pretend. 

“Egbert?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m unhappy you took leave today. Don’t do it again.” 

“Yes sir.”

“That’s all.”

The line clicked, and you immediately go pop toast in the toaster. You’re seriously hungry. Then you wander into the bathroom, searching for throat pills, because, seriously? That faking shit really takes it out of you. You settle for benadryl, forgetting for a moment that it makes you sleepy. You’ve slept enough for a while. But by the time you remembered, two pills are on their way down your throat.

All of a sudden, an image of a troll on your couch gets shoved into the front of your mind. Oh yeah! The troll, the stitches, the blood, the ruined hoodie, the CPR, etc.

You race back into the living room to find everything exactly where you left it. You pick up the hoodie at the seamline between the hood and the torso, and crinkle your nose at it. But, if your lucky, it might wash off.

So without thinking, you put the hoodie in the refrigerator, and take your lightly browned toast out of the toaster, and, to hungry to bother with any worthless refinities, shove it into your mouth. With no more potentially burning toast to be panicked about, you suddenly realize that you put the hoodie in the fridge instead of the dishwasher. Your ability to focus amazes you sometimes.

Back to the living room. There are bloodstains all over your couch. You can live with that, and it’s already dry, so it’s not like its going to rot or anything.

The benadryl is starting to take effect, much to your dismay. There’s a numbing sensation at the base of your skull. For a while, you pace around the room, this time determined to keep watch over the injured troll on your couch, but after a while you cave. It starts when your eyelids get heavy, and you think, “Well, sitting down for a while will save energy.” But sitting criss-cross-applesauce only makes the sleepy come faster, and soon you’re leaning your head and arms on the couch, level with the troll’s face. You’re battling your eyelids, and they’re winning. By a lot.

-~- 

For the second time in less than three hours, you’re awoken by a scream. This time, though, it’s not yours.


	3. Chapter 2- Meeting, Misspeaking, Abrupt Parting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is awkward. End of story.

You look at him. He looks at you. You try to blearily blink sleep out of your eyes, and he looks at you some more. His eyes are red, surrounded by a concentrated honey gold color, and they’re slightly larger than the average human eye. But then, so are yours. So maybe he has special eyes, and the rest of the troll population has smaller ones.

He bolts straight up, then gasps in pain and bends forward. You watch him, your eyes wide and concerned.

“Um... hi.”

He bares his teeth at you in a soundless snarl, but looking at his eyes, its hard to see him as a someone scary. He looks frightened and panicked, and you want to give him a hug.

That's a potentially a very bad idea. Your eyes clash, bright blue against dark maroon laced with silver. "Staring contest, go!" you murmur, and he recoils sharply, as if you just hit him with a large stick. Comic relief didn't work as well as you'd hoped.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” You speak softly, trying not to scare him any more. His eyes are darting around wildly, trying to take in everything at once, looking for exits.

Your lips part in a yawn, and when your hand reaches up to cover your mouth the troll flinches heavily, pressing up against the back of the couch. You quickly put your hand back down and yawn openly, feeling rude and embarrassed.

You then slowly raise your hands in the universal “surrender” sign. He’s still looking at you as if you’re going to hit him or something.

For the longest time, you stare at him, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. He slowly relaxes, slumping his shoulders and allowing his hands to pat around his waist, checking for the wound. He’s still shirtless, and you flush red for a moment before going to your room to find a shirt for him. You grab the first one your hands touch, just plain blue, and rush back into the living room. The troll has unravelled all of the bandages, and is looking at the neat stitches. Well, more like gaping. You can see every one of his small, pointy teeth.

“You did this?” His voice is soft, but still kind of glares when he talks. If voices can glare.

“Uh, yeah.” You’re a little surprised.

“Thank you.” He has an accent, but it’s pretty, and curls around the worlds like clouds slowly blowing into mountaintops.

“I’m John.”

“John.” He says it like Jahnn, with the French ‘J’ and everything.

“Yeah. What’s your name?”

“K!rth!tc!kt.” A jumbled mess of consonants and clicks, apparently.

You try to replicate the sounds he made, but fail miserably. You’ve been trying to enunciate slowly, starting over and over again. “Kertk- Krect-Kartck-”

You glance at him, your eyes shot through with disapproval at him for having such a foreign, difficult name to pronounce. 

His lips twitch. Then he bares his teeth, and your eyes widen in fear. His long, pointed ears perk straight up, and he makes sharp wheezing sounds through his teeth. 

You think you understand. “Hey!” You pout up at him. “You’re laughing at me, aren’t you? That’s mean! It’s not my fault you have an impossible name! It has no vowels! None! And, may I remind you, you didn’t quite perfectly pronounce my average human name either! So- yeah! Muh!” At the word “Muh”, you flick your hand at him. He flinches back into the couch, his eyes no longer narrowed smugly, but wide open and terrified. He whines in the back of his throat, a high pitched keening that wrenches your heart.

“Hey, hey, no, no, no, I wasn’t mad, I was just- Hey, come on-” He’s climbed up onto the top of the couch, and he’s shaking, “Dude, come here. I’m not going to hurt you, I was just teasing.”

What kind of world does he come from, where people heal others just to hurt them later? That’s sick, disgusting, makes your stomach twist.

You’re reaching for him. “Come here, silly.” He looks at you uncertainly, but stretches out a clawed hand to yours anyway. His trembling hand clasps your steady, and he steps delicately off of the couch’s headboard. 

He shivers, and you hand him the shirt you’ve been holding onto for quite some time. When he pulls it over his head, you’re surprised at how loosely it hangs from his shoulders, and it falls far below the back pockets on his gray skinnies. It scares you a little. “Are you hungry?”

He shakes his head, but at the same time, his stomach rumbles, and his face flushes bright red.

His face is pale under the flush. He’s swaying on his feet, and you’re reminded of how much blood he’s lost. You need to get some food into this kid.

You walk into the kitchen with Krth’tckt in tow. “What do you want to eat?”

“Food.”

“Um, yeah, I figured. Okay, is there anything that trolls can’t eat?”

“I do not think so.”

“Okay then.” Soup is what sick people are supposed to eat, so you check in the pantry for broth and potatoes and garlic. There’s no meat in your humble abode, on account of you being pescetarian, and it being Friday. So all veggies it is. You peel the potatoes and drop them in the broth, and while you wait for them to soften considerably, you peel and chop up carrots. In goes rosemary leaves, and parsley and oregano, and you decide to pass on bay leaves on account of them not being edible.

You’ve given the injured troll a piece of toast for the wait, but by the time the soup is ready, the toast is long gone. You made far too much for one person, so you put soup into two bowls, setting one in front of the troll and the other in your place. You gave him your only chair, so you’re awkwardly kneeling on a stool, trying to stay level with his face.

You watch Krth’tckt carefully, looking for signs that it was gross or something. You’re fascinated as he lifts a chunk of potato with his spoon and bites into it experimentally. His eyes light up and in the time you take to eat about half of your solids, his bowl is licked clean. “Uhm, do you want more?”

“More?” He looks like a kid on Christmas morning. “I can have... more?”

“Yeah, buddy, hand me your bowl.” You fill his bowl with steaming soup again.

This time, you watch carefully. The moment the bowl is in front of him, he’s taking large-but-neat bites, not bothering to blow on the spoonfuls. His cheeks are flushed in pleasure, there’s no indications that the soup is anything but the right temperature. He catches you staring, and the long, expressive ears quirk upward in a wordless question.

“Nothing.” You cast your eyes down and bend back over your soup, finishing all of the solids, before downing the leftover broth. You feel the heat in your stomach, possibly the most satisfying feeling in the world. By the looks of it, Krth’tckt is feeling pretty much the same way.

To the extent of falling asleep right at your table. Jesus. “How old are you, five?”

As you approach him to take him back to the couch, you hear a strange rumbling. You look around, but there’s no earthquake, no loud car passing, anything. You scoot closer to Krth’tckt, and the sound gets louder, which is when you realize its coming from his chest. You put your ear to it, your eyes wide with wonder. It sounds like there’s a mini-motorboat going on in there, and he’s vibrating. Literally. 

“Hey, hey dude, wake up. Wake up!” You shake his shoulder frantically. “Wake up!”

He blinks up at you, dark eyes filled with panic and confusion. He then proceeds to say something in his weird growly-clicky language, which you assume is a question, because he raises his short eyebrows at the end. The rumbling stopped.

“...What?” You have no idea what he just said.

“What is wrong? Danger?” Krth’tckt rephrases.

“You were making a weird noise. Like growling, but softer.”

His frown lifts into something more understanding. An “Aha!” moment. “That is happy noise. I didn’t make it for much time.”

That’s the most he’s said to you in one breath. You realize he’s not totally fluent in English. “Oh, sorry. I should have realized.” It’s like how cats purr. Not scary.

“Do not worry about it.”

There’s a long silence afterwards. It’s a comfortable silence, but you break it anyway.

“Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“I can’t pronounce your name.”

“M-hm.”

“Can you think of something I can call you, with less consonants and a vowel or two? Because Keth-t,” You click your tongue, “Kickt-”

You’re interrupted by a huff of wheezy laughter.

You look at him, unamused. “I can’t say it! It’s in your funky troll language.”

A smile remains on his lips, but otherwise, his expression turns thoughtful. His short eyebrows furrow in concentration. “Krth!kat?”

It still has one of those funny clicks in it. “No.”

“You did not try!”

“My vocal chords are incompetent. So sue me.”

He grumbles something in his impossible language. “You- why do need to say my name? I will not stay here. Goodbye, John.” He turns and opens a door. It leads to a closet. He then opens the door to the living room, then your bedroom, and from there enters the bathroom. It’s a dead end. He stomps back, glaring, blaming you for the architecture. While he was exploring, you speedwalk to the living room and lean casually on the front door. His eyes widen as he sees you leaning on what’s probably the only door in the whole apartment he hasn’t opened.

He approaches you steadily. “I won’t try to stop you from leaving. I accept that you have troll stuff to be doing, and that, even though I want to, desperately, I can’t keep you from going back to them. I don’t see why you’d want to, but what do I know? Maybe this sort of thing is acceptable in troll culture? But at least let me give you antiseptic cream, and bandages.” The words all start rushing out, trying to get as much out as possible before he snaps and leaves. He’s watching you with a strange look in his eye. “You’ll have to take the stitches out in two weeks. Stay!” You point to the ground and narrow your eyes, hoping he gets the message.

You dash into the bathroom, and snatch a few things. Trying not to drop anything, you whip back into the living room, and snatch the troll’s wrist, forcing his palm up. You slap a toothpaste-like bottle into his hand. “Apply this twice a day; once when you wake up, and once when you’re about to go to sleep.” You hand him three neatly stacked rolls of gauze, which promptly fall over, and you bend down to pick it up, but while straightening up your head hits his hand and sends the tube of antiseptic cream spinning to the floor. You hastily pick everything up and continue as if nothing happened. “Change the bandages if you’re bleeding through, or every week if they don’t get dirty.” Next comes a few packaged alcohol wipes. “These clean your hands. Make sure to rub them on your hands when you’re taking out the stitches.” Then it’s surgical scissors. “Cut the knot in the stitches with this, then they’ll come out with minimal help. Rub the wipes on these too, or else it might get infected, and that would suck. Do not take out the stitches early. You’ll bleed all over the place.” You take a deep breath. “You got all that?”

“I- I think yes.” He’s staring, wide-eyed at the medical materials in his hand.

“Good. Please, don’t let them hurt you again.” A look of understanding flits across his face, which soon hardens to form solid black fury.

You step away from the door, and he pounces for the handle, having stuffed the medicine in the pockets of his skinny jeans. He wrenched it open and slips through. Before slamming it in your face, though, he turns to face you one more time. “You think my kind did this to me?” He snarls through clenched teeth. He then slams the door so hard the entire building shakes, and knocks you over flat on your ass.

‘What?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, see you next week, or maybe sooner, or maybe I'll forget but I'll try not to?


	4. Chapter 3: A New Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stuff

It’s been six weeks since you took that unexpected visitor into your care. You don’t worry about him as much as you used to, but every so often you wonder if he really did use the alcohol on his hands, or if he took the stitches out without incident. If he kept the  scrap of paper you hastily slipped into one of the rolls of bandages you stuffed into his arms in the last minute you’d see him. 

 

You wonder if he’s alive. You wonder if he was killed by one of the machines you fixed. The thought nearly makes you sick. Your only friends, the other two engineers in your division, know something’s wrong. There’s no way you’re telling, as the death penalty for high treason has no appeal, but that doesn’t stop them from stuffing their metaphorical fingers into the cracks in your facade and trying to pry open your sealed lips.

 

General’s been being a dick and giving you small guns recently. There’s a limit to how many pistols and Uzi’s and shotguns you can dis/remantle before you go completely bat-shit insane. I mean, who uses spread shots in turrets? Well I mean, neither worked, and General told you to do your best with the two guns you were given, and the shotgun was pretty much totaled, with only the pump left salvageable. Which left you with about five-hundred bird shells, and a fully functioning turret with no ammunition whatsoever. It took almost a week, but your bird-shot turret was finished. It was actually pretty cool, despite being really inconvenient for dogfights. General seemed satisfied, though, once you put a John-invented sight on it and wired it into a L-13 so that it could be used by the pilot, because having more than one person in any kind of jet slows it down exponentially.

 

What if he’s noticed, too? Cause, you know meeting Krth’tckt changed you. You can feel it yourself. You’re not exactly sure how, but you definitely feel it. It’s given you perspective. There’s a new curiosity about trolls, as well as a new reluctance to fix and build weapons to be used against them. You’ve never exactly liked building things to kill people with, but it pays, and gets you insurance for your dad in the hospital, with cancer. Which is mega-helpful, and doesn’t actually involve you risking your life. Which is nice. 

 

You decided to join the army when you heard your dad had lung cancer. He’s still doing fine, as fine as he can be. He still sends cake over at every opportunity, though, as a mixed blessing, it has slowed down lately. It worries and relieves you at the same time. There’s only so much Betty Crocker a guy can take. You know?

 

His hospital is only a fifteen minute walk away. You still don’t go very often, but you’ve been wanting to pay him a visit. He knows things you want to learn about.

 

General’s been even calmer than usual. Which means he’s angrier. Which is pretty much the only reason you haven’t confronted him on the wimpy gun front. The other reason being you wouldn’t confront him anyway; he’s scary all the time! 

 

-~-

 

Scrubbie scrub scrub. Clickity-click goes the nail-clipper. You make sure to wash your hair twice, and use a body sponge to roughly scrape every dead skin cell off. When your skin is bright red from your painful ministrations, you turn the shower off, and find a clean towel to dry off with. You find a one-hundred percent clean shirt, freshly washed jeans, and shoes that you hardly ever wear. They’re ugly green-brown sandals, which, ironically enough, were a present from your dad. He’ll be happy to see you wearing them.

 

It’s important to be super extra clean when visiting a patient with cancer. Chances are, chemo has stripped them of any immunity they may have had, making them extremely susceptible to any bad bacteria you could drag in.

 

The walk over is short, but still just long enough for you to formulate some questions to ask. You enter the hospital, go get your sticker, check to see if he’s still in the same room, and enter the elevator with an equally clean-looking woman, maybe a year or so younger than you, who would have been pretty, but she was crying. Heavily. Big, fat tears rolled down her cheeks behind her circular glasses, and she tried to gulp in air quietly, but it came out as huge, wheezing, breathy sobs.

 

“Um, are you alright?” You can’t help but be concerned. It’s obvious that whoever she came in to see, isn’t doing alright. She turns her large green eyes to your face, and sniffles loudly. 

 

“Y-yeah. No. Maybe.” She takes a long, shaky breath, and wails, “I don’t know!”

 

“Hey, hey, shoosh. None of that.” You take her hand and step out of the elevator. “Come here.”

 

Shirtsleeves aren’t ideal hankerchieves. It’s probably rough and scratchy agains her face, but she doesn’t complain, just takes deep, shuddering breaths until she’s calmer. 

 

“Better?”

 

“Y-yeah. Thanks.” She flashes you a sad smile. “Sorry, I’m not usually like this.”

 

“Don’t mention it. No biggie. Forgive me if I’m prying, but, who were you here to see?” The smile is gone instantly. “No, it’s fine, you don’t have to say!”

 

“No, it’s okay. It’s my big sister, she’s got leukemia.”

 

“Oh.” Your voice comes out small. “I’m sorry to hear that.” You are.

 

“She just had a big operation. Her transplant doesn’t seem to be taking. She’s got an infection.”

 

“Oh, crap. That’s not good. Is she going to be okay?”

 

“I don’t know. She’s very positive though.” A soft expression comes over her face.

 

“You love your sister a lot, don’t you?”

 

“Yeah. Actually, we only met a few years ago. We got adopted by different people at an early age. We found each other over the internet by accident.”

 

“That’s so cool! Like a fairytale.”

 

“Yeah. If only it had a happy ending.”

 

You don’t know what to say. How do comfort a girl who you’ve just met, crying for her sick sister?

 

She laughs, a fluttery, quivering little laugh that wrenches at your heart. “Sorry, that was really morbid. So, what about you? I’d like to hear your sad tale.”

 

“Want to meet my dad?”

 

“Oh, Gog, I-”

 

“He’s doing well, don’t worry. Lung cancer, but it’s not so bad yet. They caught it early. I’m sure he’d love to meet you! It’s no big deal. He’s a really cool person, and he makes cake. Come on!” Your semi-reassuring words tumble out of your mouth, and you whine the last part. You’re not sure why you’re so adamant about her coming. 

 

“Well, I guess it’s fine.”

 

“Cool!” Maybe she wants to learn about trolls too. “Mind learning about trolls with me?”

 

“Uh, sure.” 

 

“Perfect.” Your smile is wide and bucktoothed, but you long ago learned to accept the fact that your smiles do that. “Off we go then.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

You take her down the hall, to room five-seventeen. “Hey, Dad? Can I come in?”

 

“John?” His voice is scratchier than the last time you were here, but it’s still fine. Just a little bit heart-throttling.

 

“Yeah, Dad, it’s me. I brought someone in to meet you. Can we come in?”

 

“Yeah, get on in here.”

 

You open the door, and try not to gag at the overwhelming scent of fresh cake. “Wow, Dad, something smells... amazing.” You can only hope that the lack of enthusiasm in your voice isn’t as apparent as it seems.

 

“Who’s your friend?” You watch his eyes flick over to the petite girl hesitating in the doorway. He’s long since been bald, but he still wears that ridiculous hat, something about preserving his sir-like dignity. They also took away his pipe, so his profile looks different.

 

“Oh! This is, um...” That awkward moment when you realize you don’t even know her name.

 

“Jade! My name is Jade.” She jumps forward to shake his hand.

 

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Jade.”

 

“Pleasure’s all mine!” She beams at him, and you feel a smile steal over your features.]

 

You watch them chat cheerily for a few minutes. Jade is all smiles and cake acceptances, saying that her sister used to bake Betty Crocker often, but now she’s in no condition to be cooking. Your father is sorry to hear that.

 

But you’re on a mission. “Hey, Dad?”

 

“John?”

 

“What can you tell me about trolls?”

 

“What?”

 

“Trolls. You know, that one subject you taught at my would-be college?” That came out more bitter-sounding than you’d intended, and you cringe when he winces.

 

“I heard you the first time. But you’ve never shown an interest, so why...?”

 

“I’m just curious.”

 

“Okay. So, the first thing you should know about trolls, is that they’re ranked by blood color...”

 

He talks until his voice is completely gone, his eyes burning with passion about this subject that you knew he loved so much. You learn a lot, but also get more questions, because you vividly, vividly remember K!rth!tc!kt’s blood hue- a maraschino-cherry shade of red, which isn’t on the spectrum. Isn’t that impossible?

 

Jade listens the entire time, rapt. Nurses come in once-in-a-while to check on Dad’s tube-tree, making sure enough of each type of painkiller and antibiotic is going into his system. You grudgingly eat one slice of cake, and politely decline any offerings afterwards.

 

Once he’s talked himself hoarse, you excuse yourselves. “Thank’s so much, Dad. That was really interesting.”

 

He waves you off cheerfully. “Bring Jade back sometime, alright? I enjoyed her company.” He really needs to stop talking now. His voice is so completely trashed. 

 

She assures him that she’ll definitely be back, whenever you tell her you going.

 

The two of you exchange numbers, and go your separate ways, which really aren’t so separate at all. Jade only lives a few doors down from you.

 

“And to think we’ve never met before!” You laugh, bidding her a final goodbye and continuing the short distance to your apartment complex.

 

You stop short when you see a crumpled heap of red in front of your door. A familiar face looks up at you with exhausted eyes, and clenches a still body in his arms. 

 

“Help her. Please. You have to help her.”

 

 


	5. Chapter 4: This Again?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which Absolutely Nothing Happens

“Oh, jeez.” Oh shit. What the everloving fuck is he doing here? Your stomach flip-flops at the sight of the dark, murky red tide flowing out of the troll girl cradled in K!rth!tc!kt’s lap. “In. Get in.”

He tried to stand while holding the girl in his arms, but his knees buckle, and he slides to the floor with a pitiful whine. “Give,” you hold your arms out, “Now.”

“I just got my couch cleaned!” You whine-mutter, trying to relieve some of the tension lacing the rooms in thick, coiling tendrils. But seriously. You did just get your couch cleaned. Bummer.

“What?” Krth’tckt’s eyes are wide and frightened.

“Nothing,” You scan her for a source of her blood, and really, really cant find it. “Where...?”

“Her... arm base.” His hand hovers above his shoulder.

“Okay. Okay. Okay.” You take gulping, hiccupy breaths.

The troll girl on your couch moans quietly. Her eyelids flutter.

“Oh, shit. She’s conscious?” You turn your horrified gaze to the male troll, hovering awkwardly a few feet away from you.

“A little bit.”

“Okay.” This is so not okay. You’re panicking, and you know it. Remembering what worked last time, you raise your hand, trying to pretend that you’re not about to do what you’re about to do. You slap yourself across the cheek. Really hard. It clears your head though, and you rise to your feet shakily. You hadn’t even noticed yourself fall to your knees.

The swift walk across two rooms into your bathroom seems to take way too long. You picture the shelf on which everything you need lies. Scooping everything precariously into your arms, it seems that at least half falls to the floor on your way back into the living room. Krth’tckt is right behind you though, picking up everything that’s fallen. He seems determined to be your midwife, so to speak.

Thankfully, the benadryl is still tightly clenched in your palm. You shake two small pills into your hand and pull the maroon-blooded troll’s mouth open by her chin. She gasps and, for the first time she seems fully conscious, her eyes opening to stare at you. Her gaze is filled with pain and terror. You pop the pills into her mouth, and close it, but she starts thrashing violently.

“Swallow it!” You order fiercely. She’s still working to spit the pills out under your hand, shaking her head ferociously. You soften your voice. “Trust me, you are not going to want to be awake through this. Trust me. Trust me. Trust me, please.” You voice breaks, and you’re begging now. You’re not sure if she understands you, but she stops moving and swallows. “...Thank you.”

It’s far to early for the benadryl to be taking effect, but she’s probably exhausted herself with her refusal. Her eyelids droop, and her breathing evens.

Okay, then, moving on. You snip away at the right shoulder of her shirt, but recoil in confusion at the perfectly healthy, normal gray troll skin underneath it.

Oh, wrong shoulder. Derp. Well, Dave doesn’t call you Egderp for nothing, you guess.  
Uncovering the other shoulder, you legit recoil at the sight of a shoulder practically peppered with bullet wounds. Bird shot. Oh 

Gog. Bird shot. You feel like you need to puke. Who else would have used bird shots in a fully dogfought war? It’s so... inconvenient.

But this girl needs your help. And in order to help, you need tweezers. You snatch and rip open an alcohol wipe, and clean your hands, then rush back to the bathroom, snatch tweezers(you’d expected another slice wound, in which no tweezers would have been necessary), and practically fly back into the living room, rubbing down the tweezers with the same alcohol pad(the sterilization magic wouldn’t be gone yet). You then kneel beside the couch, slap yourself one more time for good measure, and set to work. It’s not slow work, but there are a lot of wounds to tend to, and, plus, you’ve never done anything like this before. 

The peppering of bullet wounds continues down her arm just a little bit, and there are five or six in the collar bone area. Luckily, the wound isn’t as severe as K!rth!tc!kt’s had been. She’s not on the brink of death, but she would have been if he hadn’t brought her here so soon.

“Oh man. That. That was stressful.” You lay down on your back, a relief after being hunched over the pretty troll girl for so long.

K!rth!tc!kt doesn’t reply. “Hey, you there?”

No reply. “Dude?” You bolt upright. “Hey!”

He’s still a few feet away from you. Lying on the floor. Looking lifeless.

You’re at his side in an instant. His breathing is erratic, his eyes darting around the room in a panicked frenzy. You pull up his shirt. The skin around his wound is a sickly pasty yellow, a suspicious translucent-green liquid oozing out. It’s a little bit... frothy. The stitches are a mess. Most of the thick white line got taken out, but there are a few random threads poking out of infection-enlarged holes, and they’re not white anymore, but maraschino-cherry red. That looks hella painful. Very hella painful.

"Karkat, why the hell didn’t you tell me about this? You have a death wish or something. You are so stupid!” You whisper hoarsely, voice uncooperative. Well, at least now you have something to call him now. It sounds enough like his growly-consonant-clicky name to be recognizable. It just popped out by accident.

There’s not much you can do, except wipe away the gross bubbly stuff, take the remaining stitches out(much to your relief, he doesn’t seem to have tried to take the stitches out prematurely. The wound is pretty much a long semi-seep scratch. The infection hadn’t spread past it. It was pretty much the best infection circumstance you could have hoped for.), and smear craploads of infection creme over it. He sighs contentedly as you touch the creme to the irritated scratch and surrounding skin.

Next, your gaze flicks to his face, and his cheeks are flaming red. You put your forehead to his, fever checking, but yank it back in a hurry. You’re not sure how warm a troll is supposed to be, but that’s definitely not the right temperature. Way too hot. 

Rising to your feet, you fight the dizziness that comes hand in hand with exhaustion. Black spots threaten to overtake your vision. Ignoring them, you make it your business to grope in a kitchen cupboard for a dishcloth, and rise successful. You wet it, then wring it out as best as you can in your state, and stumble back to the living room. The towel is placed on his head. You vaguely register that he’s shivering, violently, and, in response, curl your body around his, hugging him to your chest.

You’re unconscious the moment your head finds a Karkat’s-neck-pillow.

-~-

You wake up before either of the trolls do. Your arms are still firmly curled around Karkat’s chest. The smaller humanoid’s towel fell off while you two’d been sleeping, but his fever seems to have dropped drastically in that time. He was no longer shivering, and the only telltale sign he’d been ill at all was the faint hint of red flush across his cheeks. Your heart lifts.

Blue eyes then flick to the female troll on your couch. Her breathing is even, but when you check her shoulder, you notice that you didn’t even wrap it. Adrenaline can only do so much for you, you realize, twisting your face distastefully.

You’re still wrapped protectively around Karkat, and you’re not sure how to disentagle yourself from the small, fragile body without rousing him. This wouldn’t bother you, but by this time, you really have to go to the bathroom, and feel all gross and dirty; your hands are still covered in maroon blood, it’s even under your fingernails, as nonexistant as they are. You just cut them yesterday. You’ve ruined your shirt again, but your jeans might be salvageable. If you’re lucky.

You try to shift away, but Karkat’s eyes immediately fly open, and he scoots away from you fastidiously, a surprised trill leaving his lips.

“Good morning.” Actually, you have no idea if it’s morning or what.

“I feel... so much better.” He takes a deep breath. “You have healing powers, then?”

“What? Uh, no." Healing powers? A definite no. “Basic EMT training. You need it if you’re in the mil...” The word dies in your throat. Something tells you that letting Karkat know that you were the one to invent and build the weapon that hurt his friend wouldn’t sit well with him. “Anyway, I’m going to go shower. You can wait here and use it after me, if you want. Keep an eye on your friend, ...?” For the second time in just a few sentences, you trail off, but this time, it ends in an unspoken question. You re-sterilize her shoulder, and put on clean bandages, covering for your earlier oversight.

“Arhadja.” No clicks. Just a growly sound that, once again, you’re positive you can’t reproduce.

“So, Aradia, then.” It’s close enough. “And, by the way, I’m calling you Karkat.” He sniffs in disdain. “It’ll grow on you, probably.”

“Close enough.” His English seems to have improved drastically in the month and a half you’ve missed of him.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Fuckass.” It’s so quiet that you’re not sure if he even said anything.

You toss a laugh over your shoulder. Who taught him to curse like that? Jeez.

The hot shower is wonderful, but it’s cut short by the thought of a troll loose in your apartment. That, and a terrified scream, coming from your living room.

You immediately turn the water off, get dressed as quickly as is physically possible, although its hard to get clean jeans on over wet skin.

The door to the living room is flung open by a panicked guy with a half on shirt and slightly bubbly hair. He probably looks half crazy. He’s you.

“Whassamatter?” Your voice is partially-muffled by your shirt, and with a particularly sharp yank, it covers your bellybutton and beyond.

Karkat’s arms are around Aradia, stroking her long gossamer hair and shooshing her panicked wails. She takes a deep breath and roughly wipes a hand over her eyes, before scooting away from Karkat.

“H-horror terror.” Her voice is quivering. “We get them while we sleep.”

“Like nightmares?”

“Worse. You don’t know how much worse.” She heaves a shaky laugh out. “I’ve been sleeping without a recuperacoon so long and yet...” What’s a recuperacoon?

“Not your fault.” Karkat cuts in harshly. “We all get them. Don’t worry about it.”

You’re still worried. “I’m sorry to hear that. It must be rough.” Karkat shoots you a look of surprise, which you’re confused about. What’s so surprising? “Anyway, who’s hungry?”

Aradia stares at you. “You have food?” She’s better with English than Karkat seems to be.

“Um, yeah. It’d be hard to live if I didn’t have food.”

“You’ll let us have food?”

“Yes. Come here.” You lead them to the kitchen. Aradia’s taller than you. It makes you wonder how the dwarven Karkat managed to get her here. “Sit.”

You suspect they’re both probably starving, so you open two cans of beans and pop their contents into the microwave. The microwave clock says its almost six o’clock. PM. Time, you suppose. It passes. But you didn’t have to go to work today anyway, because it’s Sunday.

You introduce yourself to Aradia. She thinks it’s nice to meet you.

In two minutes, they’re steamy and hot, and you place the bowls in front of them. Now Karkat’s been given the awkwardly short stool, and once your lightly toasted bread is finished, you sit on the counter, eating slowly. The trolls, on the other hand, are spooning beans into their mouth far too quickly to be healthy. Their dishes are licked clean before you finish your toast.

You think it unwise to give them any more heavy food, so you search your fridge for sweet things. Nope. Zero. Zip. But you do have all of the components for a potentially good idea.

“Okay, guys, who wants to something fun?”

They look at you, seeming much more relaxed after being given food. “Mmm?”

-~-

They’re both too unwell for you to ask them to help move the couch. So you’re resigned to pushing and shoving and grunting for a good ten minutes(under heavy criticism, issued by Karkat, while Aradia tries and fails to stifle her giggles under her good hand), until the couch has been turned ninety degrees to reveal a classic brick fireplace. There are still useable logs in there from last time so you busy yourself with attempting to strike a match to light some shoebox-kindling, but you break maybe fifteen, and when you do finally light one, you’re so surprised that you drop it onto your sock covered foot. You scream a (very manly) scream, and jump high into the air. You hit your head on the ceiling, and hit the ground cursing. Aradia found this very funny, and is laughing a quiet, sweet, wind-chime laugh. Karkat’s unimpressed smirk widens into a snicker; he’s pointing to your foot, where the(thankfully no longer lit) match landed, and smoke is curing innocently up from a bottlecap-sized, charred-edged hole.

You try, without much success, to patch up you wounded dignity. By means of tickling. You lunge at Aradia first, who’s already sitting on the floor, still giggling her bell-like giggle. Your piano-nimble fingers dig gently into her stomach, causing her to shriek gleefully, rendered helpless under your clever digits.

Karkat glares down at you, shooting metaphorical lasers from his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare. Touch me and you’re fucking dead. So fucking dead.’

So, naturally, you jab an elbow behind his legs, causing him to fall backwards. Heavily conscious of his injury, you dart behind his to cushion his fall. Your tickles fall on the right side of his body, away from the wrapped gash on the opposing side. He’s kind of squishing you right now, but he’s to small for you to care. He lets loose these enormous bursts of childish laughter in between writhing around, craning his neck and spitting out crude insults. It’s different from the wheezing laugh you heard last time, maybe because he’s not laughing at your incompetence, or something. You can’t get enough of hearing it, and, you’re aware of Aradia sitting up and watching you, wide maroon eyes twinkling in amusement. Your tickles continue, your smile widening every time his laugh falls innocently from his lips.

After a few minutes, you can see that you’re tiring him out, so your arms fall to your sides. You can't breathe quite right, because he’s lying on you a something of a diagonal, the small of his back draped directly over your chest. He’s breathing hard, and doing that purring thing he’d done last time. You can feel it reverberating through his whole body.

He jumps, as if startled, and rolls off you, mushing your face unceremoniously. The sound doesn’t stop though,

You heave yourself into a sitting position. “Okay, now that that’s settled, I’m going to light the fire.” They let out disdainful snorts in unison. “What, does one of you want to do it?”

“Gladly.” Aradia takes the matchbox from the floor beside you, strikes one easily, drops it on newspaper, and casually tosses it under the firewood. Flames start to eagerly lick up the side of the log, and you sigh in defeat. She, in about ten seconds, did what you hadn’t managed to do in fifteen minutes(tickling time counts).

“Okay, you win. While we wait for that to heat up some, I’ll go get some things ready.” You rise to your feet, and pluck three pillows from the as-of-recently-wall-facing couch. It’s blocking the kitchen doorway. You throw them at Karkat, and a muffled, furious, scream of surprise is the last thing you hear as you clamber over the couch to go to the kitchen. Revenge is sweet.  
Marshmallows, honey graham crackers, chocolate, shish kebab skewers. That was your fun idea.

You come back to the living room to find them sitting patiently on two of the neatly lined up cushions, courtesy of Aradia, you assume.

“Okay, guys, this is how we’re going to do this.” You hand them each a shish kebab skewer, which they look at, in a mixture of confusion and apprehension. “You go like this,” You stab a marshmallow with your stick, and they mimic you, “And,” you plunk yourself down on the third pillow, next to Aradia, and stick your marshmallow-skewer into the flame, “we wait.”

“What’s the point of this?” Karkat(you’re just now realizing what a funny name that is. Beep beep meow!) is skeptical.

“I swear to Gog, this is the most delicious dessert sandwich ever invented.” S’mores have, for a long time, been the only confection you can stand. Probably because they're not a confection, but a dessert sandwich.

“Oh.”

You all sit around the fire, patiently turning your marshmallows, when Karkat(who’s been getting impatient), dangles his a bit too close too the fire and his marshmallow is a column of flame.  
You see him start in surprise, his hand lets go of the stick, and you reach across Aradia to snatch it. In doing so, yours dips closer to the fire, and a tiny flame lights in the top corner. “Ah!” You pull them both out, and blow as hard as you can. By the time yours has gone out, you allow yourself to suck in a small breath to keep blowing on Karkat’s, but that quickly runs out and you take another small one, and the cycle continues, until the marshmallow(or rather, what’s left of it) is put out and you’re feeling severely lightheaded.

“Well, you guys, that is what we don’t do.” Karkat glares at your woozy statement.

Once your head stops spinning, you assess the damage. Yours survived with minor burns to the top, definitely still edible, but Karkat’s wasn’t so lucky. The entire skin is covered in crusty black carbon, but you take this opportunity to demonstrate to the trolls that no marshmallow is ruined, no matter how badly burned.  
The outside is obviously burned beyond repair, but inside, the marshmallow is perfectly intact, you explain. You hold the marshmallow upside down, and, breaking a graham cracker in half, watch as the gooey insides plop onto the graham cracker, and break a small piece of chocolate onto the marshmallow goop. The other side of the graham cracker goes on top, and you turn it over so that the marshmallow can melt the chocolate faster. You hand it to Karkat, and make your own s’more. After turning yours over, you turn to Aradia. Her marshmallow is a perfect golden brown, swollen so that its more of a sphere than a cylinder anymore. “Yours is perfect, Aradia. Do you want to put your own together or should I do it?”

She gets up and busies herself with creating, no doubt, the neatest, prettiest s’more ever to exist.

Karkat still hasn’t eaten his. “What’s wrong?”

His ears flick up. “How am I supposed to eat this shit?" He snaps.

“Karkat.” He looks at you. “Hold it in both hands,” you make sure he complies, “and bite. Big.” You emphasize your point by attempting and failing to stuff the entire sandwich into your mouth.

He tries to copy you. “Like this?” He has his mouth completely full, so it sounds more like, “Muff miff?”. Melted marshmallow combined with chocolate makes a nearly sales-worthy glue to hold graham crackers to faces.

You reply with an almost coherent, “Puffic”.

Aradia’s is ready, and you turn to see how she’s going to eat it neatly, because you’re sure she’ll manage somehow. She doesn’t seem to have fangs like Karkat. Maybe only Karkat had fangs. Maybe only she didn’t.

“Actually, Aradia, wait up a sec. I need to document this.” You run to go get your camera. It’s blue. Most of your things, you’re coming to realize, are blue, aided by the fact that jeans are blue.

“Okay, sit on your cushion. Then just eat it in any way you want.” You set it to video. She sits on her cushion, as you’d suggested, then takes an enormous bite. She chews and swallows. Not a single graham cracker crumb is on her face.

“Wh-what? How does that even happen? Uh-ubb-” All traces of intelligence you may(or may not) have possessed are completely gone, dwindled into nothing by this feat that could only be explained by magic.

“Okay.” You shake yourself out of your incoherent trance. “Let’s keep marshmallowing away."

You all finish your s’mores, and set to roasting more. You start telling really bad jokes, then Karkat responds in some snarky way that somehow always manages to demean you in a pretty embarrassing way, but it makes you laugh anyway, because of the way he says it; in the most convoluted, extravagant way physically possible. He burns his marshmallow every time, but is now a master of the extraction of internal-marshmallow-goo.

Aradia is a master s’mores maker. And eater. It’d be almost creepy if she was any different from the way she is, all smiles and sweetness, as if she was raised by bunnies and sheep.

At a certain point, you stop with the graham crackers and chocolate, and just eat your marshmallows off the skewer.

You know it can’t last, and that shit may or may not go down when the inevitable questions start. You can’t harbor two trolls in your apartment, committing high treason all the while, without asking. They know it too, your sure, but for now, enjoying idiotic banter over s’mores isn’t going to hurt anyone.


End file.
